Give Us Chuck Hagel for Christmas

My dad called me and left a message the other day, having
just heard that former Senator Chuck Hagel was being considered for Secretary
of Defense. “You have a connection to him, no?” he asked, before hanging up.

A connection, yes — a very brief and limited, but very
memorable one, at least from my end. My father was remembering the time I had
sat in Hagel’s senate office on Capitol Hill and interviewed him for a 2007 profile
I was writing for The American Conservative. The lengthy piece (4,000
words!) ended up on the cover under the headline “Hagel’s
Dilemma.” The “dilemma” was he no longer fit in with his party on one
single issue: the Iraq War. That’s why the contrarian conservative magazineliked
Hagel, and wanted to stimulate interest in him before a possible 2008 run for
president.

Well, he did not run for president, but that hour or so
interview had left quite an impression on me. After 18 years of dealing with
enough hot air politicians to float the Graf Zeppelin, Hagel came on
with the authenticity and frankness of a cold winter blast. If you were lulled to
sleep by the BS before, Chuck Hagel’s confident candor woke you up with a
start.

“Would I vote for (Iraq) today? No I wouldn’t …We went into Iraq based on flawed judgment, based on dishonest
motives, based on flawed intelligence, and we have a very, very big problem today,”
he told me in early 2007, just about the time “Surge Mania” had taken over the
Washington defense world — and Congress.

“I laid out all of my reservations about
the resolution (to go to war). In the end, I voted for it because I was told by
the administration that the president would not use military force unless all
diplomatic options were exercised—they were not.”

Hagel was flayed by Republican critics who
said, among other sins, Hagel was too openly critical of his own party and of Republican
President George W. Bush. They called him an “appeaser” and a “megalomaniac.” Bill
Kristol said Hagel’s arguments against the prolonged occupation of foreign
lands was “laughably weak.”

Now a Democratic President is reportedly
mulling him for defense secretary and the same Republican automatons and neoconservative
harpies are pulling no punches to thwart it. They complain about his allegedly
insufficient support of Israel (massaged, cajoled and translated for full-effect
into charges
of anti-Semitism), driven in part by his unwillingness to
impose harsh economic sanctions or use of force against Iran. He also voted
against designating Hezbollah a terrorist organization, and has encouraged open
relations with Hamas in hopes of reanimating the corpse of the Middle East pace
process.

Furthermore, Hagel’s flagrant disdain for the
runaway MIC (military industrial complex), preemptive war, and senseless foreign
occupation is such an aberration to the Washington establishment that when the
bunker busters in Congress, American Israel supporters and rightwing 101st
Keyboard Brigade heard he might be nominated, their attack
was so immediate and vicious it’ll likely serve as a model for smear efficiency
for years to come. If the U.S. Army had deployed these superlative tactics in
say, Afghanistan, they might have actually won the so-called “war of perception”
over the Taliban 10 years ago. Too bad most of Hagel’s critics prefer calling
the shots from over here, rather than putting their rear-ends in harm’s way
over there.

The War Against Hagel has hardly been decisive, however, at
least as we near the end of the year, leaving some space for his supporters to mount
a proper defense, which of this writing, is increasingly vigorous. There seems
to be a common theme to every blog post and op-ed penned for his purpose: the
man is a welcome independent thinker in the Era of the Borg — and he’s no
phony, else he would have safely buzzed off with the rest of the political hive
long ago. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, usually quite scornful of Realist
foreign policy arguments — especially concerning Iran — said Thursday he worries
about rightwing developments in Israel even more than Hagel’s purportedly soft
approach on Iran, and suggested quite baldy that Hagel’s independence would
be a help not a hindrance where it counts:

What we need are American
officials who will speak with disconcerting bluntness to Israel about the
choices it is making…Maybe the time has come to redefine the term
“pro-Israel” to include, in addition to providing support against
Iran (a noble cause); help with the Iron Dome system (also a noble cause); and
support to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge (ditto), the straightest
of straight talk about Israel’s self-destructive policies on the West Bank.
Maybe Hagel, who is not bound to old models, could be useful in this regard.

Many of us see Hagel’s impact in much broader terms than just
the Israel question. We’ve had too many armchair generals and dutiful yes men at
the levers of power, cleaving to an unsustainable post-9/11 orthodoxy that has
militarized our foreign policy and politicized our military. The
neoconservatism of the Bush years has bled literally into the so-called humanitarian
interventionism of the Obama era, and for the first time, there is an
opportunity to check that with the presence of a known Realist who, as
Harvard’s Stephen Walt says,
is “opposed to squandering U.S. power, prestige, and wealth on misbegotten
crusades,” and is immune to the “threat inflation” both sides routinely engage
in to justify lining the pockets of the defense industry. After nearly 12
years of constant war, Hagel’s references to Iraq and Afghanistan as a meat
grinder to which we’ve wastefully sent too many of our own children, and his belief
that he is the “the real conservative” because he actually calls for restraint,
should be a refreshing prospect, and not feared by Americans conditioned to accept
there is a military solution for every problem.

“In a town dominated by often-unexamined conventional
wisdom, the appointment of Hagel to DoD would be a welcome relief,” wrote
Michael Cohen for The
Guardianlast week. Reached on the phone, Cohen told me
that Hagel would be a “transformational pick,” but acknowledged that the challenges
loom large for a non-conformist now squared against not only members of his own
party, but neoconservatives wielding their “long knives,” and the pro-war wing
of the Democratic establishment, too. “Look, he is not one of them,” Cohen
said, “he’s not a neoconservative nor a liberal hawk, he thinks there should be
limits on American power.”

Meanwhile, The
National Journal and The
Washington Post have published biographical sketches emphasizing
Hagel’s Vietnam War record and its impact on his post-war career and personal
philosophy (this hardly makes up, however, for the Post’s incoherent
broadside published by its editorial page on Dec. 19). And of course, The
American Conservative’sDaniel
Larison and Scott
McConnell, not to mention our own Justin
Raimondo, are astutely swatting away the haters at every turn of this
increasingly torrid offensive.

Michele Flournoy

But while many of us here at Antiwar would like a Hagel
nomination for Christmas, the biggest concern (aside from his Swift Boating) is
that we might find Michele
Flournoy under the tree instead. For those who never heard of her, she
founded the Center
for a New American Security in 2007 in anticipation of a new Democratic
White House. The think tank was designed to promote a more muscular Democratic military
policy, which meant its top people supported Hillary Clinton for president as
well as the U.S. counterinsurgency in Iraq, and then Afghanistan, known then as
the Petraeus
Doctrine. Once Obama won, it became the go-to policy shop for the White
House and a revolving door to the Pentagon and State Department for its senior
fellows. Flournoy went on to take Doug Feith’s position as Undersecretary of
Defense for Policy, the No. 3 job at the Pentagon. What she actually did in the
fabled “E-Ring” to advance policy or to help extricate the military from an
increasingly disastrous war in Afghanistan, is anyone’s guess. But the “hot
policy wonk” and top COINdinista apparently made all the right friends and
greased all the right skids, and is now the favored pick by the neocons, who
see a kindred soul where Hagel is just heartburn ready to happen.

So buttressed is Flournoy by the Washington elite that
people like Paul Wolfowitz, who in all reality should be ignored completely for
his role in one of the worst war blunders in American history, are rolling out
to defend her (in Wolfowitz’s case, maybe he should have cooled his wheels at
home). After admitting he’s “not deeply familiar with Michele Flournoy’s record
at the Defense Department or with her overall qualifications to be Secretary of
Defense,” he says
the fact 3,500 Afghan security forces have died this year (compared to 307
Americans) is proof enough she knows what she is doing. I say it’s proof enough
that nothing has really changed since the Bush administration, except there are
more troops in Afghanistan now (about 68,000) and the U.S. casualty count was much
lowerthen —- 117 in 2007 to be exact.

When liberal flak Eleanor Clift wrote about the prospects of
the “first female defense secretary” back in November, all
she could muster in her favor was Flournoy’s Oxford pedigree, a stint in
the lackluster Clinton Pentagon policy shop and quotes like these from former
colleagues: “she has spent a great deal of time thinking how to deploy
our military instruments economically and effectively.” Glad she was thinking
about it before she left her post in February. Not much came out of if,
however, if today’s accounts of continuing bloat, waste and mission creep are
any indication.

Frankly, one hears a lot about Flournoy the “team player” but
very little about her vision, ideas or actual accomplishments. The fact is, “the
team” has been on a losing streak in Afghanistan since Obama took office, while
her think tank, of which she continues to serve on the board of directors, has
reaped all the benefits and influence as a conduit between the Pentagon, Foggy
Bottom, the White House and greedy defense industry. “She’s a safe pick, she
will carry the water — if you pick Hagel it would be saying ‘I want to push the
envelope a little bit on foreign policy,’” said Cohen, “pushing it in a more
realist direction than we have in the past.”

Perhaps that is why so many of us here are excited about the
prospect. There are some areas where Hagel and the readers on this page might
diverge, particularly on domestic issues. He’s a solid pro-life social
conservative. He voted for the Patriot Act (he
later fought for broader constitutional safeguards, saying he took an oath
to protect the constitution, not “an oath of office to my party or my
president”). We don’t know yet where he would stand on the controversial
detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We have
no idea whether he would stanch the flow of U.S. personnel and weapons into
Africa or how he would deal with a newly inherited drone war. As for the
Pentagon labyrinth itself, as University of Texas professor (and expert COIN
critic) Celeste
Ward Gventer tells me, “the problems are systemic and largely exceed the
decision or personality of one man, even if he is at the apex.”

Still, if a Flournoy pick would signal an endorsement of the
status quo, a Hagel nod would serve to challenge it. This inclination to question
policy is quite attractive to observers like us who are tired of living in a
fake candy cane marshmallow bubble world when it comes to foreign policy and
national security. As a senator, Hagel often addressed these issues
realistically, with no regard to how it might hurt his chances for a
presidential nomination, which turned out to be short-lived as a result (quite
sad, considering the parade of ham-n-egger Republicans who ended up running, and
losing, in the last two elections).

Even more so, when I interviewed Hagel and his acquaintances
for that 2007 story, a picture emerged of a man whose Vietnam experience (he brought
home two purple hearts, a broiled face, ruptured eardrums and shrapnel in the
chest from combat there) had entirely shaped his political and ethical values.
As he told Charlene Berens, who wrote his 2006 biography Chuck
Hagel: Moving Forward, his first thought when he was evacuated from the field was, “if I ever get out, and if I can ever influence
anything, I will do all I can to prevent war.”

As the number-two guy at the Veterans Administration in the
early 1980s Hagel carved out a reputation as a veterans’ advocate. He pushed back
against a movement to oppose the design for the Vietnam War Memorial in
Washington. He didn’t much like being backed into a corner, and supported Maya
Lin’s controversial renderings. He was on hand for The Wall’s 1982 unveiling.
Today it formidably stands as one of Washington’s starkest reminders of folly
and regret. It is brutal in its message, yet in its way the most reverent of all
the memorials. Like Hagel himself, The Wall forces us to think about Vietnam,
not just whistle past it on the way to the more triumphant World War II
memorial.

Clearly, while some have tried to whitewash Vietnam — or
in the case of former Gen. David Petraeus & Co., take
all the wrong lessons from it — Hagel continues to use that awful
experience as a touchtone for restraint. It has grounded him. His impulse to
challenge war policy — despite the political peril — would serve us all. When
I called Berens to talk to her about Hagel she said, “I think on a very
personal level, he feels responsible for putting anyone else in that kind of
situation. He seemed to me pretty much what he appears to be, I didn’t sense
much artifice there.”

I didn’t either, when I met Hagel. “What you see is what you
get” couldn’t be a plainer description of Hagel as a politician and in this
case, that’s a good thing. He was affable and reflective, confident and
not easily ruffled.

No doubt all of these things — particularly the charges
against Hagel on Israel — might ultimately tank his chances for the job, but
there is nothing lost in hoping. So, Mr. Obama, ignore the threats and the spiteful
accusations and please give us Chuck Hagel for Christmas. We can’t promise to
be good, but we can guarantee it’ll shake things up.

Author: Kelley B. Vlahos

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.

There are many reasons to oppose Chuck Hagel besides Israel, anti-semitism and Iran.

To me he is the stereotypical Archie Bunker type bigot. His policies have been anti gay (even now after his late and self serving apology he doesn't support equal benefits for gay military families. He is anti-African American (with a 17/100 rating from NAACP and admires Strom Thurmond as a great role model. anti Woman (vs choice and contraception)
and
Hagel has drawn additional heat from insiders who claim he lacks the credentials needed to manage a department as large and essential as the Pentagon.

“Yes, Hagel has crazy positions on several key issues. Yes, Hagel has said things that are borderline anti-Semitism. Yes, Hagel wants to gut the Pentagon’s budget. But above all, he’s not a nice person and he’s bad to his staff,” said a senior Republican Senate aide who has close ties to former Hagel staffers.

“Hagel was known for turning over staff every few weeks—within a year’s time he could have an entirely new office because nobody wanted to work for him,” said the source. “You have to wonder how a man who couldn’t run a Senate office is going to be able to run an entire bureaucracy.”

Others familiar with Hagel’s 12 year tenure in the Senate said he routinely intimidated staff and experienced frequent turnover.

“Chuck Hagel may have been collegial to his Senate colleagues but he was the Cornhusker wears Prada to his staff, some of whom describe their former boss as perhaps the most paranoid and abusive in the Senate, one who would rifle through staffers desks and berate them for imagined disloyalty,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq. “He might get away with that when it comes to staffers in their 20s, but that sort of personality is going to go over like a ton of bricks at the Pentagon.”

Multiple sources corroborated this view of Hagel.

“As a manager, he was angry, accusatory, petulant,” said one source familiar with his work on Capitol Hill. “He couldn’t keep his staff.”

“I remember him accusing one of his staffers of being ‘f—ing stupid’ to his face,” recalled the source who added that Hagel typically surrounded himself with those “who basically hate Republicans.”

Sources expressed concern about such behavior should Hagel be nominated for the defense post. With competing military and civilian interests vying for supremacy, the department requires a skilled manager, sources said.

“The Pentagon requires strong civilian control,” a senior aide to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Free Beacon. “It’s already swung back in favor of the military over the past five years. A new secretary of defense should push it back in its rightful place, but it’s doubtful Hagel would be that guy.”

“It’s not clear that [Hagel] has the standing, the managerial prowess, or the willingness to gore some oxen,” said the source.

One senior Bush administration official warned that Hagel is ill informed about many critical foreign policy matters.

“He’s not someone who’s shown a lot of expertise on these issues,” said the source, referencing a recent Washington Post editorial excoriating Hagel’s record. “That [op-ed] was extraordinary.”

“Only in Washington,” the official added, “can someone like [Hagel] be seen as a heavy weight. He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

Hagel is likely viewed positively by the administration mainly because he is a Republican who often criticizes his own party, the source said.

“He’ll dance to a tune played by the White House,” said the former official. “That I think is the real problem.”

As lawmakers consider a deal to avoid sweeping budgets cuts and tax hikes, Hagel’s support for slashing spending at the Pentagon has irked many defense hawks.

“This is a time when a secretary of defense needs to be raising hell about the sequestration cuts,” said the Rumsfeld aide. “It’s not clear that Hagel has any interest in picking that fight.”

Hagel’s reluctance to chastise Iran also remains a central concern.

As chief of the Pentagon it is expected he would avoid planning for a military intervention should Tehran refuse to end its clandestine nuclear enrichment program.

“The military brass is already reluctant to offer up any military options on Iran even though it’s their job to have something on the books and to leave the options of the commander in chief open,” said the Rumsfeld aide. “Hagel will only reinforce these worrisome tendencies.”

“Chances are he’ll view any legitimate effort to talk about military options with Iran as some plot by the ‘Israel Lobby’ to box him in,” the source said.

Phil Giraldi

Great article Kelley and Merry Christmas! Congratulations Jean you've managed to cherry pick a number of nasty comments and assessments about Hagel derived purely from sources who are trying to discredit him. Even his intelligence is impugned by an anonymous source who no doubt is one of the really smart guys who have been involved in shaping our defense policy over the past ten years. If they had any shame at all they would shut their mouths. Hagel took on his own party on Iraq when it was really difficult and politically damaging to do so. He would be an independent voice, not tied to the establishment, much like Chas Freeman would have been. Most important, he is being attacked by the Israel Lobby head on and openly over this appointment. If he wins the Lobby will have to think twice before trying to openly derail a critic next time around. If he loses, it will prove that the Lobby runs a key part of our foreign policy. Naming Hagel is to break with the consensus foreign policy focused on Israel that has been a disaster for our nation and also for the American people. That is why it is important.

KSAT

Mr Giraldi – Great rejoinder to an ignorant comment by jean. As you are a contributing columnist to anti-war, perhaps you can answer a question that I have raised in other discussions. To wit – why hasn't Obama nominated Hagel already instead of letting him twist in the wind for weeks? If he backs down now after (I think) forcing Susan Rice to withdraw after weeks of getting beat up by the McCain smear campaign, what does that say for his backbone? Rachel Maddow, on her show, said that all recent reelected POTUS's had their cabinet replacements picked within 45 days and it only took GWB 8. Is Obama so tied up with the "fiscal cliff" fiasco that he thinks he cannot yet proceed on this? Anyway, in my opinion, not a good start to a 'lame duck' term in which he will see his power diminish daily if he keeps dithering. I know it's Christmas Mr G, but if you have time I would like to get your opinion on what I think is an important issue.

Phil Giraldi

I think the name of Hagel was floated to see how strong the negative reaction would be. I personally believe that Obama will not nominate him because he is a president who does not like to take any risks politically speaking. He will instead nominate someone who is perfectly acceptable to the Israel Lobby, though Flournoy would seem to be a long shot even if she is being pushed by the neocons.

omop

Must admit though that by taking his sweet time Obama is providing fodder to the "neocons/israeli firsters to become better known and hopefully more disliked.

KSAT

Thanks for your response Mr G. You are probably correct that Hagel will not be nominated. However, isn't it truly depressing that a president who no longer has to worry about reelection is still afraid to take any risks 'politically speaking'?

Kelley V

Funny, I saw this very comment on The Huffington Post a day or two ago! Cutting and pasting is a blast! No mind, I'm all for getting it all out on the table.

Curious

The question is jean why are you so eager for gay and poor people to die in war? Do their lives have so little value to you?

rosemerry

There are many reasons to oppose Chuck Hagel besides Israel," anti-semitism" and Iran.
NO, these are good points about Hagel, and the other points are minor. You need an honest, straight talking person who will NOT continue the war-all-over-the -globe policies and outlook.

wars r u.s.

Funny, even if everything you say is true, he is still a step up from anything we've had in years and years. He's not an israeli firster and, as secretary of defense, that's the number one qualification in my book.

Sean2009

As the kids would say, bad hasbara is bad.

Try again under another alias.

skulz fontaine

Sen. Charles Timothy 'Chuck' Hagel, an American politician that has ACTUALLY served US military. Wow, is that a novel concept or what.
I don't think an asshat the likes of Billy 'boy' Kristol has served US military. Probably that dual-citizenship cowardice at work and play.
Well said Ms. Kelley. As for Jean the shill from the above, unnamed and "former officials" is a load of crap. Go shill somewhere else fool.

joe

why would someone on antiwar.com support a polititian because the were once in the miltary?

Phil Giraldi

there was a draft going on at the time – not like he had any choice in the matter

wars r u.s.

It's secretary of defense. Seems natural.

pashtin

Use the correct term. It's secretary of WAR.

omop

Jean above is telling it like Rabbi Yusef told the whole world. To quote the Rabbi " true to expressed views gentiles are considered expandable and exist to serve the “chosen people”. According to news reports Rabbi Ovadia Yusef, famous in recent memory for having said the following which was published in the Jerusalem Post.

“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel…Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat…With gentiles, it will be like any person: They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant. That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for the Jews…”

Its reported to be interested in establishing a presence in New York to be able to increase donations to his cause.

So Omaba better appoint a donkey as Secretary of Defense or else. Guess the reported gossip in Europe that the USA is Israel's b*t*h is not so far off.

MvGuy

I'm happy with Kelly for Christmas and the New Year..!! Her incisive and probing analysis plus her gift of giving great innuendo will keep me more euphoric than any dish Hagel could serve….. From Generals to……….. "used car salesman who was supposedly planning to kill the Saudi ambassador ." Kelly swerves through OUR current bought and paid for Ersatz American Reality of a hostile world kept at bay and civil by our crusading killers….. human and drone. No one is safe from her skewer. Our torturer, murderers and thieves who sit at the upper eschelons of governance in most places probably have more to fear from Kelly Vlahos than Chuck Hagel…… A fine man I'm sure… I personally prefer those types who spot the shoddy merchandise BEFORE, not AFTER they vote to acquire at taxpayer expense… and before we reap the grief of families, countrymen and co-religionists…. These friends with whom we now find ourselves bonded, the oil and land acquisition folks…. and their implacable minions…. Hey, whats a few presidentual assassinations and false flag wars between friends anyway….. Especially when they assure us, them…&&&&&&& anyone who is forced to listen…….it's G-d's werk…. we're doin……..

When all of America becums Detroit, their crak propaganda kill mission accomplished, or more likely ,still a werk in progress.. Our friends will be off to some new and more zaftig host … and we can begin to rebuild our lives…… Unless some miracle…… more likely induced Kelly than Chuck ….should occur…. In the meantime, IOOOs of thanks to Kelly for all the laughs and inside info… &&& ……….Merry Christmas to you and all……

Mark Thomason

It is time now to ramp up loud objections to Michele Flournoy. She has close ties to the Israel lobby, via her organization. She is part of the problem in all of our wars.

The best support for Hagel is to make it clear that this alternative is not without opposition either. Status quo is unacceptable, and will also generate problems for Obama.

pashtin

Whoever supports a war criminal like Obama, John Kerry and CHUCK HAGEL VOTED FOR IRAQ WAR that KILLED MORE THAN A MILLION. Chuck Hagel voted for Iraq War.
What have you done? Chuck Hagel is a war criminal like Obama, Kerry, Rice, Clinton, Bush, and thousands more. Obama has pushed Iran towards war more than Bush, his policy is WAR. Obama was selected for his BLACKNESS to do this job. Israel lobby and US have the same goal to destroy Iran. Iranians have no choice except to fight back and destroy war mongers and their WMD. People of the world must help them to destroy the war mongers. Obama using this trick to to change his BLACK record to bring ‘the liberals’ fools on board. If John Kerry is anti war then Hagel is too but everyone knows better. The ‘journalists’ are helping a war monger by asking people to sign a 'petition' where does nothing. If you really want to prevent the war, then pour into the street and BURN THEIR WMD NOW otherwise be quiet. People of the world are sick and tired of your CHEAP TALK. Iranian people are very smart and they have already said: (All are war mongers, no exception). .

You must be stupid if you believe this rubbish. Obama is worse than Bush and the ‘progressives’ and phony ‘left’ like Juan Cole, Richard Falk, Noam Chomsky, all US gov. front, told you to vote for him because Obama is killing Iranian babies, through SANCTION, and more SANCTION, which is WAR. These “progressives’, phony ‘left’ are supportive of Obama’s policy to kill through sanction and Drone as much as possible to destroy Iran’s economy so people can pour into street. Well, every single of you will take this wish into your grave.

Unfortunately Obama hasn't nominated Hagel yet. He should have, before the Christmas recess, during the fakey "fiscal cliff" news-storm, but he didn't, Obama being Obama., indecisive. Another trait Obama has is to cave when there any whimpers of opposition.